umented the experiences of pilgrims who came to the shrine
in search of healing, among them women from a wide range
of social backgrounds.
The cult of Saint Thecla—that is, the social practices,
institutions, and material artifacts that marked the lives of
actual devotees—was not limited to Hagia Thekla at Seleu-
cia. From Gaul to Palestine, devotion to Thecla was ex-
pressed through literature and art: her visual image appears
on wall paintings, clay flasks, oil lamps, bronze crosses,
wooden combs, stone reliefs, golden glass medallions, and
textile curtains.
One region for which there is wide-ranging evidence of
Thecla devotion is Egypt. Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 300–
373 CE) refers to Thecla extensively in his writings to Alexan-
drian virgins, and his rhetoric presupposes that his female as-
cetic readers were already intimately familiar with Thecla’s
example. During the theological controversies of the fourth
century, this community of women was exiled to the distant
Kharga Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt. Ancient wall
paintings of Thecla that still survive in local cemetery chapels
may provide evidence for the funerary practices of those as-
cetic women at the oasis. Alexandrian devotion to Thecla is
also witnessed by the production of monastic Lives modeled
after her example—among them, a series of legends about
early Christian transvestite saints (monastic women who dis-
guised themselves as men). Near Alexandria, a satellite shrine
to Saint Thecla was established near the pilgrimage center
dedicated to the Egyptian Saint Menas. Numerous pilgrim
flasks with the image of Thecla paired with Menas survive
from that site. Finally, the cult of Thecla was thoroughly
“Egyptianized” in late antiquity with the production of new
namesake martyr legends connected with locales in the Nile
Valley.
Other regions have provided more scattered material ev-
idence for Thecla devotion. Fourth-century golden-glass me-
dallions with the image of Thecla among the beasts have
been discovered at a cemetery in Köln, Germany. A church
and catacomb in Rome are named after Saint Thecla, but no
specific images or artifacts survive that might give informa-
tion about her local cult in late antiquity. In Syriac Chris-
tianity, despite a lack of nontextual artifacts from antiquity,
a rich literary tradition has been preserved, including a homi-
ly given by Severus of Antioch (c. 465–538 CE) on the feast
day of Saint Thecla, and at least eleven manuscripts of the
Acts of Paul and Thecla, the oldest dating to the sixth century
CE. Finally, in North Africa, red ceramic pottery from the
late fourth or early fifth century portrays the anonymous
image of a female martyr, stripped to the waist and praying
with arms outstretched between two lions. The details of the
iconography have led some to argue that the figure is Thecla;
however, it could just as easily be the representation of a
namesake African martyr. A similar case appears on the
gravestone of an Egyptian woman named Thecla, where the
deceased is portrayed in the image of her patron saint.
The evidence for namesakes of Saint Thecla is fairly
abundant in late antiquity, and the practice of naming one’s
child after the saint provides yet another window into the re-
ligiosity of her devotees. This religiosity was ultimately
grounded in an ethic of imitation. Whether they were moth-
ers or virgins, early Christian women who participated in
Thecla’s cult commonly saw themselves as striving to imitate
her virtues as a female saint and martyr.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burris, Catherine, and Lucas van Rompay. “Thecla in Syriac
Christianity: Preliminary Observations.” Hugoye: Journal of
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Dagron, Gilbert, ed. Vie et miracles de Sainte Thècle. Brussels, Bel-
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Davis, Stephen J. The Cult of St. Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s
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Davis, Stephen J. “Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex: Intertextuality and
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guised as Men.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10, no. 1
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Hennecke, Edgar, and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, eds. New Testa-
ment Apocrypha, vol. 2: Writings to the Apostles, Apocalypses,
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Lipsius, Richard A., and Max Bonnet, eds. Acta Apostolorum Apoc-
rypha. Leipzig, Germany, 1891. Text in Greek and Latin. See
pages 235–272.
MacDonald, Dennis R. The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for
Paul in Story and Canon. Philadelphia, 1983.
Nauerth, Claudia, and Rüdiger Warns. Thekla: Ihre Bilder in der
frühchristlichen Kunst. Wiesbaden, Germany, 1981.
van den Hoek, Annewies, and John J. Herrmann Jr. “Thecla the
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(2001): 212–249.
STEPHEN J. DAVIS (2005)THEISM is the philosophical worldview that perceives the
orders of existence (physical things, organisms, persons) as
dependent for their being and continuance on one self-
existent God, who alone is worthy of worship. Theists differ
among themselves about the nature of God and the relation
of God to these orders, but they close ranks against deists,
who, in principle, exclude revelation and divine intervention
in world order, and against pantheists, who identify God
with these orders. Theists hold that God, transcendent cre-
ator of the orders, remains an indivisible unity as he sustains
them in accordance with their capacities and his ultimate
purposes.
In formulating their views, philosophical theists remind
themselves of the many obstacles that impede the human9102 THEISM